The new year brings fresh rumours of the Xbox 2 to light, as the vast majority of the online gaming press keeps its eyes firmly fixed on this month's CES, where Bill Gates himself is expected to talk about the next generation of Microsoft's console.

The latest story doing the rounds is concerned with, shock horror, Halo 2 - or rather Halo 2.5 to be precise. Many sources are citing an unnamed source from within Microsoft, who has announced that the game will come pre-loaded onto the hard drive of the new console, complete with HDTV support and a number of other juicy extras.

It's likely that there will be some sort of announcement concerning Xbox 2 in 2005, but until the console is announced it should be noted that any speculation surrounding it is merely guesswork. It would be great to see an upgraded version of the most popular Xbox game packaged with the machine, possibly with Live-enabled co-operative play (the feature that seems to have been most notably missed so far), so we all await the year's first games show with bated breath.